JEREMY BENTHAM QUOTES
English jurist & philosopher (1748-1832)
All punishment in itself is evil.
JEREMY BENTHAM
Principles of Morals and Legislation
Among the several cloudy appellatives which have been commonly employed as cloaks for misgovernment, there is none more conspicuous in this atmosphere of illusion than the word Order.
JEREMY BENTHAM
The Book of Fallacies: from Unfinished Papers of Jeremy Bentham
In principle and in practice, in a right track and in a wrong one, the rarest of all human qualities is consistency.
JEREMY BENTHAM
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
The turn of a sentence has decided the fate of many a friendship, and, for aught that we know, the fate of many a kingdom.
JEREMY BENTHAM
The Works of Jeremy Bentham
Lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished.
JEREMY BENTHAM
attributed, The Canadian Bar Journal, June 1966
Submit not to any decree or other act of power, of the justice of which you are not yourself perfectly convinced. If a constable call upon you to serve in the militia, shoot the constable and not the enemy. If the commander of a press-gang trouble you, push him into the sea. If a bailiff, throw him out of the window. If a judge sentence you to be imprisoned or put to death, have a dagger ready, and take a stroke first at the judge.
JEREMY BENTHAM
"A Critical Examination of the Declaration of Rights", Anarchical Fallacies
Kind words cost no more than unkind ones ... and we may scatter the seeds of courtesy and kindliness around us at so little expense.
JEREMY BENTHAM
Deontology; or, The Science of Morality, from the MSS. of J. Bentham
As to the members of a Democracy, they are the best sort of people in the world; but then they are but a puny sort of gentry, as to strength, put them all together; and apt to be a little defective in point of understanding.
JEREMY BENTHAM
A Fragment on Government
Our race of real freedom is only beginning; hitherto there has been freedom for a party--licence for a faction, but the great mass of the people have been in bondage.
JEREMY BENTHAM
The Works of Jeremy Bentham
Every law is an evil, for every law is an infraction of liberty.
JEREMY BENTHAM
Principles of Legislation
Conduciveness to happiness being then the test of virtue, and all happiness being composed of our own happiness and that of others, the production of our own happiness is prudence, the production of the happiness of others is effective benevolence. The tree of virtue is thus divided into to great stems, out of which grow all the other branches of virtue.
JEREMY BENTHAM
Deontology; or, The Science of Morality
From real laws come real rights; but from imaginary laws, from laws of nature, fancied and invented by poets, rhetoricians, and dealers in moral and intellectual poisons, come imaginary rights, a bastard brood of monsters.
JEREMY BENTHAM
Anarchical Fallacies
Secrecy is an instrument of conspiracy; it ought not, therefore, to be the system of a regular government.
JEREMY BENTHAM
"On Publicity", The Works of Jeremy Bentham
How is property given? By restraining liberty; that is, by taking it away so far as necessary for the purpose. How is your house made yours? By debarring every one else from the liberty of entering it without your leave.
JEREMY BENTHAM
"A Critical Examination of the Declaration of Rights", The Works of Jeremy Bentham
He who thinks and thinks for himself, will always have a claim to thanks; it is no matter whether it be right or wrong, so as it be explicit. If it is right, it will serve as a guide to direct; if wrong, as a beacon to warn.
JEREMY BENTHAM
The Works of Jeremy Bentham
Judges of elegance and taste consider themselves as benefactors to the human race, whilst they are really only the interrupters of their pleasure.
JEREMY BENTHAM
The Rationale of Reward
The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may one day come to be recognized that the number of legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even a month old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not Can they reason?, nor Can they talk?, but Can they suffer?
JEREMY BENTHAM
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
Kings are (nay were before they were Kings, since it was this qualification determined their subjects to make them Kings) as strong as so many Hercules's; but then, as to their wisdom, or their goodness, there is not much to say.
JEREMY BENTHAM
A Fragment on Government
There is no pestilence in a state like a zeal for religion, independent of morality.
JEREMY BENTHAM
The Works of Jeremy Bentham
It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.
JEREMY BENTHAM
A Fragment on Government